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This paper highlights the need for researchers to work across disciplinary boundaries in order to capture the complexity that care practitioners have to engage with everyday in care home settings. Drawing on findings from a literature review on the complexity of loss in continuing care institutions for older people, the case is made for less victim blaming and more appreciative approaches to research. The way this thinking informed the development of a further literature review on quality of life in care homes (My Home Life) is discussed. Findings from this second study are shared by illustrating key messages with quotes from older residents, relatives and staff living, visiting and working in care homes. These best practice messages focus on: transition into a care home; working to help residents maintain their identity; creating community within care homes; shared decision‐making; health and health services; end‐of‐life care; keeping the workforce fit for purpose, and promoting positive culture. The importance of collaborative working in both research and practice is discussed. The paper is likely to be of interest to all those concerned with improving and developing evidence‐based practice in the care home sector, including users and service providers, managers, commissioners and inspectors, policy‐makers, researchers and teachers.

IN the less‐than‐a‐century in which children's literature has developed, many types of books have emerged, and perhaps one class—the moral story—has disappeared (or if not entirely so, at least it is cold‐shouldered by modern young people). But the new literature has not displaced the fairy tale, one of the oldest forms, and still a favourite of children with imagination. A volume which should be added to the home bookshelf alongside Andersen, Grimm and Perrault, is Christina Hole's recently reprinted collection of tales from many lands entitled Folk Tales of Many Nations (H. Joseph, 10/6). They are related in a pleasant, straightforward style which presents no difficulties, and they are just long enough to hold the attention of young readers. In Norwegian Fairy Tales (Muller, 5/−) G. Strindberg has chosen old traditional folk legends about trolls, hulders, and other fairy people, and she has illustrated them herself. The Golden Treasury of Fairy Tales (Gulliver, 6/−) contains abridged and retold versions of childhood favourites by the Brothers Grimm, Hans Andersen, Frances Browne, and others. On the production side, the printing is rather lifeless and badly spaced. An interesting collection of tales handed down from father to son in the remote parts of the Irish countryside has been made by Gerard Murphy in Tales from Ireland (Browne and Nolan, 7/6). The volume is attractively produced and illustrated and will appeal to rather older boys and girls. Tom Scarlett's The Gnome and the Fairy and other Stories (Muller, 6/−) is in the modern vein and recounts the adventures of everyday people with fairies, wizards, birds and animals. Hettie Roe's simple line drawings are almost too tempting for children with a box of crayons.

Long‐term care in general, and care homes in particular, have never enjoyed high status as a place to live and work. This remains the case. In large part this marginalised position is due to the continued failure to value the contribution that care homes make to supporting frail and vulnerable older people. In order to promote a more positive vision of what can be achieved in care homes, this paper argues for the adoption of a relationship‐centred approach to care. The need for such a model is described, and how it might be applied using the ‘Senses Framework’ is considered. It is argued that adopting such a philosophy will provide a clearer sense of therapeutic direction for staff working in care homes, as well as more explicitly recognising the contribution that residents and relatives can make to creating an ‘enriched environment’ of care.

Simon Cowell, the impresario behind The X Factor, a popular television talent show, has often been compared to P.T. Barnum, the legendary nineteenth century showman. This paper aims to examine the alleged parallels in detail and attempts to assess this “Barnum reborn” argument.

Putative parallels between the impresarios are considered under the aegis of two long‐standing, if contentious, historical “theories”: time's cycle and the great man thesis.

Seven broad similarities between the showmen are identified: vulgarity, hyperbole, rivalry, publicity, duplicity, liminality and history. In each case, the arguments pro and con are explored, as is humanity's propensity to personify.

In accordance with the iconic literary critic Harold Bloom, who “strikes texts together to seek if they spark”, this paper strikes two celebrated showmen together to generate historical sparks.

In order to manage library or information functions you must be able to persuasively communicate with your management. To accomplish this, you must communicate in the language of your management, marshalling trendy and persuasive points on your own behalf With that as a given, there has been a very heartening development over the last few years for library and information managers—a burgeoning management attention to information.

This design‐based seminar was aimed at broadening the horizons of designers and engineers. The greatest area of cost reduction in any electronics project is in making the right choices at the conception and design phases. This seminar was one step in this direction: a piece of 1·6 mm FR‐4 is not always the best substrate to use.